


Between

by thefriendyouleftinthehallway



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Kinda, Late Night Conversations, Out of Character, too much master sympathy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-27
Updated: 2021-01-27
Packaged: 2021-02-28 23:14:22
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,605
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23455345
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thefriendyouleftinthehallway/pseuds/thefriendyouleftinthehallway
Summary: The Master gets back from the other dimension and arrives late one night at the TARDIS door. The Doctor doesn’t ask any questions as to how he escaped, she can see he’s upset and she’s always had a weak spot for the Master anyway, despite the whole ‘best enemies’ situation. They have a heart-to-heart and the Master leaves.
Relationships: Thirteenth Doctor/The Master (Dhawan)
Comments: 4
Kudos: 48





	Between

When the humans needed to sleep, she typically took the TARDIS to a very quiet area of the universe. Sometimes just a blank spot, far from planets: away from life and the chaos that follows it. Sometimes, just for the poetry of it, the beginning of time. 

The humans don’t quite feel the same way about the empty spaces in the universe. They just go to sleep, pleased with the quiet. The Doctor feels every inch of the open space like a blankness in the back of her mind. It can be maddening or calming, depending on her mood. Time-Lords are an inherently psychic race (and even though most of the beings in the universe are psy-null, and most of the beings who  _ are  _ psychic operate on a different frequency to the ever-unique race she finds herself unwillingly a part of) she still appreciates the dull, un-interactive frequencies given off when there are lifeforms nearby. 

It feels a bit like living on Gallifrey again. Back when she either didn’t disapprove of the people, or when they were not somehow dead. They’d been dead before, and they were dead again. First they’d been ‘dead’ because of her, now they were dead because of the Master. Either way, they had been dead, and when alive they had been terribly annoying. The fact that they were once again gone was both relieving and heartbreaking, in a way. 

In any case, she enjoys being around others. Even the psy-null frequencies of her companions help to fill a pothole in her mind where she’s biologically built to have a psychic connection to an entire race of people. If that pothole isn't filled it just gets bigger, and she’s quite ready to admit that if she lets it get too big, the road will disappear entirely, and then she’d be something a little more like  _ him _ . 

That’s the real reason she keeps them around. Why she always has a human (pet, the Master might say) with her. Of course, she’d never let them know that. She’s too kind to shatter the illusion that they’re special, and not just lucky. Sometimes it feels like fate assigns the humans to her for this very reason. 

You can’t have two insane Time-Lords rampaging throughout the universe. Maybe humans always find their way into the Doctor’s life because there’s got to be a balance. Maybe that’s why, ever since the Time War, Gallifrey keeps getting stamped out of the universe, too. 

Good and Evil. Doctor and Master. Got to keep the balance. Except it’s not that simple. It never is, really. Except for Daleks. Daleks are just evil little bastards, period. To be fair, their creator was more complicated than that. Yeah. Nothing is ever as simple as good and evil. 

In many ways the Doctor understands the Master. In some ways more than she’d like to. More than she should. More than, at the very least, her Hero role dictates should be possible. But once again, nothing is ever quite that simple. 

The Doctor and the Master were both resistant to the ways of Gallifrey; in very different manners, granted. They understood each other in that, but this was just about the only example of the Doctor’s empathy for the Master that she wasn’t ashamed to silence about. 

In the quietness of empty space, although there’s a soft buzz of her companions, sleeping deeper within the TARDIS, she hears him, senses him, before he knocks on the door, certainly. Though she’s not entirely certain for how long before. She’s so used to his frequency that she doesn’t become fully consciously aware of him until she does hear the actual knock. 

It’s a classic, one she’s heard a million times.  _ Ba, bada-bada ba, ba ba.  _ She looks up at the door, and she can feel his hesitation about knocking again, she takes so long to answer. She wonders if he can hear her, in his mind, like she can. Or if he isn’t paying that much attention. She wonders what her frequency sounds like. She wonders what he might know she’s feeling; she can’t discern herself, but perhaps he can. 

_ Ba, bada-bada ba, ba ba.  _ It’s an earth knock. She suspects he’s doing it deliberately. Not to fool her, not to mock her. To… humour her. Pay homage to her preference for the human species, perhaps. But the intent isn’t cruel. She can read that much in his frequency. 

So she opens the door. He looks genuinely surprised, and it makes her smile, just a bit. They’re in open space, the deck of his TARDIS-house is brushing against the blue panelling of hers. Door-to-door. 

She guides him in, and they sit under the console together, quietly. She doesn’t ask how he got out of the other dimension; she doesn’t need to know. Or, more accurately, she doesn’t want to know -- it requires admitting that she put him there in the first place. Which she did, and she’s not exactly ashamed of that. She just… doesn’t want to provoke his feelings. 

Despite that, and despite the fact that she knows what a bad idea it is, the words tumble out of her mouth before she can rethink them, a shade too dark for her taste, and yet on her tongue all the same: “You must have been like God.”

“What?” He asks, and his voice sounds tired, old, raw, though he looks no different from when she sent him away. 

“You said that to me once. You know, about when I… well,” she finds she can’t quite admit it out loud. 

“Burned Gallifrey? Except you didn’t really, did you? So it doesn’t count,” he says back to her. 

“I thought I had, so it counts to me,” she responds. “And besides, I never burnt Gallifrey. I blew it up.”

“Of course,” the Master says, smiling a bit wickedly. “That’s the difference between you and I: I have class.”

She snorts a little before she catches herself. “How is burning classier than exploding? Exploding is way cooler.”

He looks grim. “You’re not supposed to laugh at that,” he says, too seriously. 

“I know,” she answers, suddenly serious to match him. “I know.”

“You’re laughing about it. You’re not supposed to joke about it. That’s my job, I’m crazy, I’m the bad guy. You’re the good guy. You take it seriously and angst about it with manly stoicness.”

“Womanly stoicness.”

“Don’t you care what I’ve done?” he says loudly, quickly. 

“Of course I care, but it’s old news, isn’t it?”

“You’re the good guy, you care  _ more  _ than this.”

“I do? I do. It’s awfully tiring. Wouldn’t it be better if we could both just be something in between. You can be a little bit good, I can be a little bit bad,” she offers. 

“And you keep me here like one of your pets,” he scowls. 

“Like an equal,” she says. 

He clenches and unclenches his fist, sighs heavily. And then he guides her face with his hands and presses their foreheads together. Like this, with the physical contact, their minds mingle much more intimately than without. 

When they separate, the Doctor takes one of his hands and threads her fingers through his. He’ll likely go and commit genocide after this, but that doesn’t mean he can’t be gentle now. It doesn’t mean she can’t be gentle with him, either. Maybe that’s cruel. She doesn’t particularly mind. 

“It doesn’t have to be like this, you know,” she points out. “There are better ways to get me to pay attention than making me the hero to your villain.”

“I know, I know,” he mumbles. “You love it.”

“I admit nothing,” she laughs. 

They fall asleep under the console, but when she wakes up (to Ryan saying he thought she didn’t need to sleep) his frequency is too far away to sense, and his hand is gone from hers. 

\---

It was the humans who pointed out that her behaviour had changed. She’d always been an ‘everyone lives’ sort of person, and she still was. But she was slightly more pessimistic, privately, and she’d become a bit broody. 

When she’d first regenerated, she was… fresh, like the cusp of springtime. But the taint of a self-contained sliver of ice, shadow of darkness in her heart, it followed her everywhere. It had been there in her previous regenerations, some more than others. Heavier than ever since the Time War. Lighter, perhaps, since Gallifrey had returned. Gallifrey was gone again, though she knew that that didn’t have a thing to do with it. 

She knew what it was. She was only just coming down from the high of a fresh start. New body, new companions, new everything. And now she was realising that she couldn’t run from things forever. Even with the freshness, the ice remains. 

Although she’d love to blame something, it wasn’t the Master’s frequent secret visits that was getting to her either. It was just the natural way of things. New gets old. Freshness turns to rot. 

The more years she lives, the greater the shadow seems to get. There’s something bitter there. It’s not going to ruin her life, but it’s resurfacing since she buried it when she came into her new form, and it’s here to stay. 

“You right?” Yaz asked, on a normal TARDIS day, before they’d decided where they’d attempt to go. 

“I’m fine,” the Doctor answered. 

“You sure? You’ve been quiet lately.”

“Oh, this is just me. You didn’t know yet because I haven’t had you long,” the Doctor said. 

“Had us?” Yaz said, incredulously but in good humour. 

The Doctor only looked away. 


End file.
